We're all friends with "that girl" on Facebook. You know, the one who updates her status every 2.5 seconds with every mundane detail of her life, like "Going shopping!!" or "Watching a movie with the BF!"

I always assumed these types just want people to be jealous, but a new study shows that they actually do it to cure their loneliness.

In the study, researchers at the University of Arizona analyzed the status updates of 100 student volunteers and asked some of them to increase the frequency of their status updates for a week. They also filled out a survey at the end of each day to measure their moods and feelings of social connection.

The results? Those who increased their number of status updates felt a lot less lonely than those who kept the same frequency of posts. It didn't matter if people "liked" or commented on the post—just the simple act of writing an update made them feel more connected.

Interesting.

The whole concept behind the study got me thinking: How does Facebook affect my mood? Shameless full disclosure: I love to post status updates to see how many people like and comment—it shows that people are actually paying attention to me.

Am I subconsciously doing it to feel more connected to people? Let's find out: I've decided to go on a sort of Facebook "diet" over the next week and deliberately decrease my updates on some days and up them on others. I'll weigh in here on how it affects my mood each day.

Stay tuned.

Want to follow along? You can add me on Facebook because obviously, I love having friends. I'm also on Twitter.